The United Nations (UN) and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) on Thursday jointly launched a partnership program that aims to build the resilience of households in the Bangsamoro region in the face of social disruptions such as the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic.
Bankrolled by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Fund, the joint program spearheaded by the UN and implemented by UNICEF, FAO, and the BARMM Government aims to strengthen the social protection system of BARMM to make it inclusive, able to forecast risks and quickly address needs in times of crisis.
During the web launching, UN Resident Coordinator in the Philippines Gustavo Gonzalez said the COVID-19 crisis is not only a health and humanitarian crisis, but also a human crisis, an economic crisis, and a development crisis, threatening the gains that the Philippines has made towards achieving the SDGs.
“To ensure that no one is left behind--a key guiding principle of the SDGs--governments should be able to establish a social protection system that is able to quickly and effectively aid people most-at-risk of the impact of disasters and emergencies,” he said.
In a 2018 Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) figures, around 74 percent or roughly 108,600 families in the Bangsamoro region were categorized as poor.
Conflict, natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to push the Bangsamoro poor families deeper into poverty.
On a nationwide scale, child poverty in the region is the highest in the country at 68 percent. Almost 1.3 million children in BARMM live in poverty, around 7 out of 10 children (2018 PSA basic sector poverty report).
It was also noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, some families were excluded from the distribution of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP).
Social protection programs include cash transfers including child grants, school meals, unemployment benefits, skills development, and more. It also helps connect families to essential health services and increase labor productivity, employability, and income, no matter what circumstances they are in, to give them a fair chance in life.
In BARMM, however, social protection programs lack data, coverage, capacity, cultural context, and coherence with Social Protection, Disaster Risk Reduction, and humanitarian policy at the national and regional levels.
To address this, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will work with Bangsamoro Government and its ministries, focusing on three key interventions, including mainstreaming risk-informed shock responsive social protection in the Bangsamoro Development Plan (BRDP); building capacity of BARMM institutions to analyze and monitor both natural and human-induced risks and improve synergy and; improving the poverty registry system to include risk and hazard vulnerability assessments, predictive analytics, inclusive targeting, and effective monitoring.
BARMM Chief Minister Ahod B. Ebrahim expressed his eagerness to witness the partnership’s eventual outcomes and its lasting impact on Bangsamoro communities.
“All of our initial plans, of course, are now retracted towards the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic. We are committed that when this crisis comes to an end, the Bangsamoro stands fine: economically, physically and to an extent, mentally,” Ebrahim added.
According to a UN handout, the social protection program has already begun supporting families in BARMM following the distribution of US$100 emergency cash assistance to some 1000 families in Lanao del Sur on May 21 and 22.